In the summer of 1973,
a group of young filmmakers went into the burning Texas heat to make
a horror film. They didn't have any delusions that they were making
art and they didn't have the Internet to promote it. All they had
were cameras, a crew and a desire to scare the shit out of everyone
who would eventually see the film. And boy, were they ever
successful. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
is gritty, sweaty and putrid. You can smell it in your nose, taste
it in your mouth and feel it in your bones. It's sticky, wet and
stomach-churning. This is one of those flicks that goes up there
with The Exorcist in terms of
unwatchably horrifying. The movie just bothers me, man.

The story goes like this - a van full teenagers is heading across
the Texas wasteland. Everything seems to be going okay for them...
that is, until they pick up an odd little hitchhiker. He tells them
stories of cattle slaughter, takes their pictures and, when he
doesn't get paid for his handy work, he starts slashing out with a
rusty razor. They naturally kick him out of the van, but their road
to hell is only beginning. When they stop off for gas and a
breather, they get hunted down one by one by a large man wearing the
skins of his victims on his face. And his preferred weapon? Wouldn't
you know - it's a chainsaw. Well, yee-haw!

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an
acquired taste. But it's a classic horror film. And if you enjoy
scary movies and you haven't seen it yet, you should do so very
soon. The problem is... well, maybe DVD isn't the way to go with
this film. How do I put this... the DVD transfer is not all that
great. It seems like something is slightly off. I just couldn't put
my finger on it while I watched it the first time. But since I know
Don May, Jr. pretty well (and he did the original transfer for
laserdisc when he worked at Elite), I asked him what was giving me
goose bumps about the video. So here's what Don had to say. It's
pretty interesting...

Todd Doogan: Don, if Pioneer
used the original transfer you did of The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the DVD they put out, why
doesn't it look the same?

Don May, Jr.: Well, they used
Elite's transfer. But it's not really our transfer. I mean it is,
but not really... if that makes any sense. Look at the DVD and the
laserdisc side by side, and you will see a bunch of things different
with them. The DVD was made from the transfer we did that didn't
have any digital line removal - which we did do on the transfer we
put out on laserdisc. Also, there is a bad optical effect on the
DVD. When you look at the scene when Marilyn Burns is getting her
fingers sucked on by Grandpa, she passes out. In the film, there is
a dissolve that goes from the house to a full moon. On the
laserdisc, the dissolve is smooth. It goes from the house to the
moon and it's a nice dissolve. But look at the DVD - it "pops"
instead of dissolving. The house will dissolve partway, and then POP
the moon appears. No full dissolve. A little back story on this. You
see, to do the transfer, we had to make a new 16mm internegative
from the original A/B roll negatives for Chainsaw,
but there were no timing sheets or optical notes for that at all.
RGB Optical went back and made us the new internegative. They had to
do it all by hand and one of the dissolves got screwed up, which was
something that happens - it's no one's fault. They just had to fix
it and I noticed it during the transfer with Tobe. We finished the
transfer as is, with the errors, and made a backup onto another
digital tape. RGB Optical went back and made a new piece of film for
the correct dissolve and we inserted it later on our master. We then
sent the master out for line removal. When the project went to
Pioneer, they got their hands on the backup tape that wasn't fixed,
instead of the real master, I guess. The reason the lines were there
was because Chainsaw was
stored so horribly. I don't want to accuse any particular facility
of storing it badly, but... it was in a brown paper bag just lying
in a box. Granted, it was stored in a cold, climate controlled
vault, but they could have put it in a better box or something so
that it wasn't just laying in there. The movie was - the A/B roll
was - put together with film glue and, as it was wrapped on the
reel, the glue hardened over time and became imbedded on the reels.
The reels were sticking together as they were being unspooled. It
was scary. I was like, "Oh no! This may not be usable. This
friggin' movie is a classic and the negative is totally ruined!"
The glue splice marks near shot changes are what you see on the DVD.
Shortly after some of the shot changes, especially the scenes later
in the film with Sally running through the house, you will see these
lines. When we made the internegative, of course, all those damn
lines were printed onto the film. There was nothing we could do
about it. We actually sent a reel of the A/B roll to Kodak because
they have this chemical that swells the film element to try and
remove debris. For this, it just didn't work - they tested a little
piece and it swelled, but it wouldn't get rid of the glue. So we had
to go back and digitally remove the lines, and we obviously didn't
get every single one. Some go by so fast that you miss them, or we
had to leave them because of the movement that was on screen. If you
digitally remove the line, it would blur the image in the frame.
There are a couple of scenes on the laserdisc that have that little
blur because we tried to remove the line. I mean, what's the trade
off? You either have white lines that go across the screen or you
have blurs. We had to make a judgment call, and some stayed and some
went. The DVD has ALL of the lines - all 180 of 190 of them - still
present on the letterboxed image and that's disgusting to me. The
funny thing is, the line removal place is credited on the DVD, but
there's no line removal on it!

Well, there you go. Thanks, Don. The DVD is mastered from an
in-progress work print. So, if you still want a definitive version
of the film, break out your old laserdisc player and hunt you down a
copy of Elite's laserdisc. If you don't care, well... the DVD is,
for the most part, the same as the laserdisc (except for the
transfer). The existing transfer is a bit soft and shows more grain
that it should (even given that this is a grainy, grainy film). The
audio is presented in both the original mono and a new Dolby Digital
2.0 track that both sound good and are on par with the laserdisc.

All of the original extras are here as well. Well, except for my
favorite extra - the "baby on bones" tag that was at the
end of the original scrolling laserdisc credits. Here, they take the
credits and put them on cards. But all the rest is there.
Fortunately, the incredibly insightful commentary track by the
filmmakers is still here too. This is a really good track, just
brimming with anecdotes and history. It's a must listen for any fans
of movie making. There are some stories here that will drop your
jaw. We also get some deleted scenes (6 of 'em), 3 alternate footage
loops, the "Death of Kirk" study, a huge collection of
trailers from the entire series, a blooper reel, a props and set
reel and photo galleries. It's all very, very cool. The DVD even
features a spooky menu screen Easter egg. Just wait for it to pop up
on the main menu screen.

I don't think Pioneer even knows that this is a flawed print And
yes, I'm being extreme when I say it looks bad. It looks okay, but
since this was basically a work print, the DVD obviously could look
better. The line removal work did clean up some of the picture and
made for a better viewing experience. Thankfully, I still have my
laserdisc to supplement this DVD. But if you don't, you could settle
for this. Leatherface is waiting for you to dance, folks... he just
needs your screams as the music.